


blue is the warmest color

by imaglowstick



Category: Sally Face (Video Games)
Genre: Bullying, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Friendship/Love, Gen, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Multi, Self-Hatred, but dont let that scare you!! i want my boys to be happy too, i should be mad at myself that my first ao3 fic is about travis phelps but... im not, is this too many tags?? maybe, sal is the best and that's a fact, travis is a little garbage boy but that's okay he's working on it, wow!! my first AO3 fic!!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2019-10-29 22:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17816276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaglowstick/pseuds/imaglowstick
Summary: Travis had never really thought about what his favorite color was. Then he met Sal Fisher, and decided it was probably blue.





	1. crush culture makes me want to spill my guts out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Travis hates Sal Fisher.

Travis Phelps received one of the worst beatings of his life when he was eight years old, a mere few hours after coming home from choir rehearsal. His father had been waiting for him at the kitchen table. That was how he knew he was going to be hit.

At the time, Travis hadn’t truly understood why he was being punished, why he had to be taught a lesson. His father didn’t go into much detail, but he had elected to tell him, in a voice that was almost dangerously quiet, that Travis’ choral director had called him earlier that day with concerns about his behavior in class, specifically his interactions with another boy, Nathaniel. The older woman explained that the two boys’ closeness had become... uncomfortable, and she worried Nathaniel was a distraction.

“It’s those sort of distractions that can sway a young mind away from their rightful path,” she’d said. “And away from the love and devotion of Christ. I’m becoming afraid that Travis is being tempted by sin.”

Later that night, Travis’ father gave him an ice pack for the new bruise starting to form on his jaw, sat him down on the living room couch, and told him about sin. He told him that there were certain feelings in the world that were inherently sinful, inherently wrong. They were feelings that needed to be crushed beneath one’s heel in order to truly be rid of them and accept God into one’s heart. They were feelings that tainted your insides and made you disgusting. They were feelings that no man should ever have. They were feelings that no son of Joshua Phelps should ever have. At the time, Travis had listened and nodded in compliance, but he hadn’t truly understood. Now, at sixteen, he did. But it was fine. He had attended an incredibly prestigious Christian camp for most of the summer before his freshman year, a camp designed specifically to cure sinners struggling with disgusting, shameful thoughts like those. Perhaps at one point Travis had had those thoughts. But now, he was cured.

He was cured. But sometimes he still felt sick.

Travis Phelps met Sal “Sally Face” Fisher on his third day of sophomore year, and he hated him immediately.

Sal was a lot of things that Travis despised. He was smart, without ever really trying. He finished every math exam with time to spare and aced almost all of them, the antithesis of Travis’ failing grades. He was eye-catching. He drew everyone’s attention the moment he entered a room, for better or for worse, but regardless of people’s reactions to him- his small and delicate stature, his unnaturally blue hair that he wore in disgustingly effeminate pigtails, his creepy prosthetic face that showed zero emotion- he never seemed phased. He hardly ever responded to harassment from his peers, and when he did, he was as calm as ever. Sal was always calm. Even when he did get angry, you could tell he still had a handle on his emotions. Travis didn’t possess that talent, never had, and Sal’s gentle nature pissed him off endlessly. He loathed how okay Sal seemed to be with himself, _loathed_ how comfortable he seemed to be in his own skin. Everything about him made Travis scaldingly angry, but the thing that Travis hated the most about Sally Face was that he was a faggot.

His girly, childish hairstyle notwithstanding, Sal wore skirts to school. He wore bows in his hair. He drew little hearts and stars on his mask. He painted his fucking nails. Usually black, but every so often they’d be rainbow. He hung out with a fat kid with green hair, the fat kid’s goth girlfriend, a long-haired stoner guy who hated Travis almost as much as Travis hated Sal, and possibly the worst out of all of them, that gay nerd Todd. Ashley Campbell was the only normal one of the group, but Travis hated her too. She was always around Sal. She was always so touchy with Sal. That stoner kid too, they were always hanging around him, always with a hand on his shoulder, or the top of his head, fingers fiddling with the ends of his pigtails. It rubbed Travis in a way he didn’t truly understand. Then again, he didn’t truly understand a lot of things. What he did understand was that Sal “Sally Face” Fisher made his insides curdle.

But that shouldn’t have mattered. As his father often told him, out of sight, out of mind. Resentfulness was a very un-Christian-like attribute, and Travis knew the better choice to make would be to turn the other cheek. It wasn’t Travis’ job to cure Sal. That was in God’s hands. So, Travis looked the other way.

He found out quickly that looking away from Sal Fisher was much harder than he expected it to be.

He hated him, that’s what it was. That’s what it had to be. What else could make Travis’ skin prickle so much whenever Sal entered a room, whenever his gaze happened to make contact with the blue eyes hidden underneath that white prosthetic? He hated him, it was obvious, it was clear as day. What he felt was so easily identifiable as hatred.

Until, something changed.

The first time Travis noticed it, he was in algebra. It was October and Sally Face was wearing a light brown sweatshirt that was three sizes too big on him. It hung off of his petite frame in a way Travis couldn’t quite describe, but that he knew he absolutely loathed. The air in the room was warm and tired and Mrs. Packerton was attempting to get her sleepy class to solve the equation she’d just written on the board. Her thin eyes swept around the classroom once before landing on Travis. Of course.

“Mr. Phelps, you think you could try your hand at this one?”

Usually, Travis could keep his mouth shut. He could bury every sarcastic comment deep inside his mind where they couldn’t escape and get him in trouble. But that particular morning, he’d gotten less than four hours of sleep the previous night and he couldn’t stop fucking thinking about Sally in that dumbass oversized hoodie, so his guard was down a little. He shifted his chin from where he was propping it up on his hand and blew a strand of blonde hair out of his eyes.

“I think I’d rather stick my hand in a blender, actually,” he muttered, and behind him, Sal Fisher giggled.

Sal’s prosthetic face didn’t give much leeway for emotion or expression. No one could tell whether Sal was gritting his teeth or beaming behind that mask of his- although Travis had noticed that his eyes tended to scrunch up whenever he smiled- so to make up for the lack of facial mood cues, Sal’s body had instead directed the majority of his emotion into his voice. Sal’s voice was soft, gentle just like the rest of him was, but it was expressive like almost nothing Travis had ever heard. If Sal was confused, his voice had a constant tilt to it, as if everything he said was a question in and of itself. If Sal was annoyed, his voice would dip an octave deeper, low and grating against his vocal chords (Travis hated the way that made his insides shiver). And if Sal was amused, his voice grew warm and light, and his laugh- his laugh was something else. His laugh was the kind of laugh people would trip over themselves to cause.

Travis wasn’t tripping over himself, but he felt like he could after he made Sal laugh. He’d received detention for his oh-so-witty remark, but it didn’t matter as much to him as it should’ve. That was when the hatred started to feel a little bit like something else. That something else made Travis feel sick.

The bullying- Travis had enough morality to admit that’s what it was- started small. Disgusted looks, snide comments, rumors spread from classroom to classroom. Side swiping him in the hallway, spitting out a “watch where you’re going, freak” before ducking into a nearby bathroom, his head pounding after being hit by a waft of the cinnamon perfume Sal had been wearing. Travis had smelled cinnamon for the rest of the day after that. He hated how much he didn’t hate it.

Nothing worked. The days passed, and nothing changed. Every time Travis saw Sally Face, he felt sick. He hated himself for it. The bullying got worse.

Travis hated algebra. He wasn’t a star student by any means of the term, but math had always been his worst subject. He wasn’t mathematically inclined and had always preferred the more creatively driven classes, English and history in particular, so he wasn’t surprised that he was constantly teetering on the edge of failing algebra. It didn’t make it any better though, and it didn’t make his father any less angry about it.

His day had been horrible before it even started. Travis had been jolted awake by his alarm going off. He’d been roused from sleep gasping, sweaty and shaking, the last whisper of his dream slowly fading from his consciousness, and in that last whisper was a head of messy blue hair and the gentle touch of delicate fingers, so familiar and welcome that it was almost nauseating. Travis woke up feeling like he was going to vomit. His latest bruise, an angry purple halo around one hazel eye, still hadn’t faded. He knew people were going to notice it, and when he walked into his second period algebra class three hours later, it was that head of messy blue hair from his dreams that noticed it first.

“Jesus, man. Are you okay? What happened?”

Sal’s voice was feather light, just like it always was when he was concerned about something. Travis hated how much his heart shuddered at the idea that that concern was for him. He shot Sal an angry glare as students wove around the smaller boy to get to their desks.

“Nothing happened, Sally Face, and even if it did it’s none of your fucking business. Fuck off.”

A pause, and then Sal’s eyes squinted a bit, an indication that he was furrowing his brows. “Did someone do this to you? That’s horrible.”

Again with the fucking _concern_. The nausea was rising up again in his stomach.

“I told you to fuck off, Fisher! Take a hint, for fuck’s sake!”

Sal lingered for a moment. Travis drilled holes in the wood of his desk with his eyes. At the front of the room, Mrs. Packerton was shuffling papers and standing up to close the door, a clear indication that class was about to start.

“Mr. Fisher, please sit down. We’re about to start today’s lesson.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sal replied. Travis had to physically stop himself from gritting his teeth at the response. Unending politeness- that was another thing Travis couldn’t stand about Sally Face. The blue-haired boy in front of him gave him one last lingering look before going to sit down. Travis focused on his breathing and rubbed the tiny silver cross he wore around his neck with his thumb.

The test went horribly, as expected. Travis hadn’t been able to focus in algebra all year. He’d always had trouble paying attention in that class- he’d never found math even slightly interesting- but this year was significantly worse. Whenever he felt himself starting to focus, Sal Fisher would raise his hand to answer a question (correctly, of fucking course) and Travis’ train of thought would instantly hit a dead end. He hated how easily Sal could distract him. And since Sal could so easily distract him, Travis had absorbed very little of the information Mrs. Packerton had attempted to grind into him. She placed the test packet face-down on his desk, and when she announced for everyone to turn their exams over and begin, Travis took one look at the first equation and knew he was screwed.

The numbers and letters on his paper looked like Greek to him, but Travis attempted to work through the equations. He was halfway through the test and had only answered six questions, and only felt satisfied with half of those answers. He could feel the anxiety in his chest curl uncomfortably tight and tried to shove it down. Panicking wouldn’t help, but fuck, he was panicking.

“Excuse me, Mr. Fisher.”

Travis looked up. Mrs. Packerton was staring at something over his shoulder, eyebrows raised. Silence, and then, “Sal, wake up!”

Wake up? Had Sal been sleeping? Travis wouldn’t be surprised, Sally Face fell asleep a lot in class. Sometimes Travis wondered if he had trouble sleeping, and then his brain reminded him that he didn’t give a shit. Behind him, there was a startled, groggy “huh?” and a shift of fabric as Sal’s head shot up from where it had been resting on his desk. Internally, Travis shoved down the urge to turn and see if his hair was messy from his nap. His brain liked the idea of a rumpled, sleepy Sal Fisher too much for his own comfort.

“That doesn’t look like math to me.” Mrs. Packerton’s words were strict, but her tone was light. Everyone knew Sal was one of her favorite students and she couldn’t care less about how he doodled on his papers. He probably couldn’t do anything to actually make her upset.

“Oh, sorry.. I must’ve dozed off. I already finished the test.”

He _what_.

“I know, dear. You aced it as well. Very good.”

Travis pressed the tip of his pencil into his paper hard enough to break the lead. Of course. Of fucking course Sal had finished the test, aced it, and had enough time to take a precious little catnap on his desk. Of _fucking_ course.

Mrs. Packerton smiled, slightly amused. “Just try to stay awake for the remainder of class, okay?”

“Sure.” Sal’s voice was apologetic. “It won’t happen again.”

Finally, he gave in to the urge to turn. One of Sal’s pigtails was slightly askew due to sleeping on top of a hard surface, strands of blue hair curling around the sides of his mask. The feeling that bloomed in his stomach at the sight of rumpled, sleepy Sal Fisher made his eyebrows cinch together and his nose wrinkle in disgust. He told himself it was disgust at Sal, but the thought lay uncomfortably in his mind.

“...... And Mr. Phelps, eyes on your own paper.”

Mrs. Packerton’s tone was significantly less kind now that she was addressing Travis. Before he could look away, Sal’s cornflower blue eyes flicked to the right and met his. The following rush of heat to Travis’ face was enough to make him want to snap his pencil in half. Hands shaking, he forced his gaze back to the exam in front of him.

He turned the test in at the end of the period with half the questions unanswered and a streak of grey lead from where he’d ground the tip of his pencil into the paper. He handed it to Mrs. Packerton face-down, and the look she gave him solidified his internal desire to crawl into a hole and die.

His father wasn’t going to be happy. It wasn’t enough to earn him another beating, but even then, it was up in the air. A lot of what Travis did nowadays earned him another beating.

When Travis exited the classroom, feeling exhausted even though it wasn’t even noon yet, the first person he saw was Sal Fisher. The second person was Ashley Campbell, but that didn’t help either. Their voices, though moderately quiet, carried across the semi-empty hallway.

“... yeah, I dunno. I was really nervous about that test. But it turns out I did okay! It was actually fairly easy.”

“Nice, Sal!” Ashley beamed at the shorter boy in front of her. “See, I knew you’d pass.”

Sal’s eyes gleamed at the praise as he thanked her. The affection, clear and distinctive in both their voices, made Travis’ ears burn. He knew he should just walk away, knew that today had already been shitty enough and he shouldn’t do anything to make it worse, but for some reason, he wanted Sal to look at him.

“Hey, freak!” His voice rang loud and aggressive in the quiet hall. Sal turned to face him, his pigtails bouncing as he did. Travis couldn’t see his expression, but next to him, Ashley’s face darkened considerably with dislike.

The feeling was mutual.

“Nobody likes a goody-two-shoes, Saaaally Face!” Travis added a sarcastic lilt to the nickname, stretching it out on his tongue in a drawl.

“Nobody likes a cliche bully, Traaaavis.” Sal’s voice dipped down in annoyance, though his demeanor remained calm. Travis’ hands curled into fists at Sal mimicking his mocking tone. The insides of his stomach curled into knots at Sal slurring his name.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Ash snapped, distaste sharp and clear in her voice. She took a small step closer to Sal and her hand reached out to him protectively. Seeing her fingers hovering so close to Sal’s arm made something bitter and hot unfurl in Travis’ chest.

“Shut up, bitch, I wasn’t talking to you.”

The words were spat out and Ash’s lip curled in anger, but she didn’t respond to Travis’ heckling. Next to her, however, Sal’s eyes flashed behind his mask.

“You know, if you take that stick out of your ass, you may actually enjoy yourself for once.” Sal’s voice was even lower now, darkened with his subtle but still noticeable irritation. “Maybe even make a friend or two.”

Something inside Travis snapped at those words. Or maybe it broke? He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. His anger was making it harder to breathe evenly. He could feel something building, in his chest, in the air. He knew that if this conversation continued he was going to do something he’d regret. But he was too angry to care about consequences, about repercussions. For once in his life, he was too angry to care.

“Fuck off, faggot!” The slur didn’t rouse any sort of reaction from Sally, but Ash let out a noise of fury and indignation. The two of them had gotten significantly closer to Travis- or had he gotten significantly closer to them? It didn’t matter. He gritted his teeth in a failed attempt to keep his emotions under control and tried to think of an intelligent rebuttal. “I have more friends than you’ll ever have!” Oh, great. Real slick, Travis, reverting back to grade school retorts and childlike lies. He was so fucking pathetic. His hands were shaking again. Sal wasn’t speaking. Was he backing down? Travis’ chest felt tight, coiled, a pressure he couldn’t quite describe, couldn’t even begin to understand, but that he knew throbbed almost as much as the bruise around his right eye did, almost as much as the words his father had said to him right before-

“You kiss your daddy with that tongue?”

Pain exploded from Travis’ knuckles where they collided with the cheek of Sally’s mask. The force of his blow sent Sal staggering three and a half steps back, almost losing his balance, his hands flying up to his face. When he straightened up again, Travis could see a small red bead making its way down his chin.

Ashley cried out in shock, reaching out to steady her friend, panic and worry overtaking her formerly furious expression. The anger returned almost immediately though, as her eyes snapped up to bore into Travis’. “What the _hell_ , asshole?!”

Travis didn’t answer. He didn’t even meet her eyes. He stared at the ground as if looking at it hard enough would will it to swallow him whole, and walked away.

His entire body felt cold. He’d assumed becoming violent would make him feel like he normally did after lashing out at Sal, like his father felt after hitting him- relieved, satisfied, better, like a bit of weight had been lifted from his tensed shoulders- but it didn’t. It felt as if his chest had caved in. He felt sick. He felt as if he wanted to reach inside of himself and rip out his organs, rip out his stomach so that this horrible nauseous feeling that was eating at his insides would go away. His knuckles throbbed just like his black eye did, just like his father’s words, just like the look in Sal’s eyes when he looked up at the boy who’d just punched him across the face.

He’d just punched Sal across the face. He had just hit Sal fucking Fisher. If he didn’t have a chance before, he certainly didn’t have a chance now.

Travis felt like he was going to vomit.

He didn’t take the bus home that day. He didn’t take it the next morning, either. He didn’t want to see the hatred that was going to be in Sally Face’s eyes the next time he saw him.

Travis’ mother had always told him that the best way to truly understand one’s own emotions was to write them down. When you wrote down what you were feeling, you could pick through the jumbled thoughts in your mind, calm down your racing subconscious, and once you put said racing subconscious down on paper, it would become much less scary, much less formidable. It became something you could come to terms with. Maybe even accept. Travis didn’t think he could ever truly accept how he felt about Sally Face, but if God was kind, if God was merciful, maybe he could begin to come to terms with it.

Travis went home that night and started a letter to Sal Fisher.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not gonna lie, i haven't actively written fanfiction in almost three years but what can i say? i have a weakness and its name is sal "sally face" fisher. this was kinda silly and just for fun but i hope you guys liked it anyway !! :)
> 
> the chapter title is a line from the song "crush culture" by conan gray


	2. that something else (aka the bathroom incident™)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Travis writes a letter but doesn't really send it. Then the bathroom scene happens.

The next day was bologna day.

Travis liked bologna day. His dad didn’t make dinner- he’d always said it was a woman’s job- and Travis himself was a rotten cook, so the Phelps ate out a lot. Usually fast food, sometimes that nice Italian place if his father was in an abnormally good mood. But overall their diet was particularly bland and particularly repetitive. Travis liked getting to experience different food through the school lunches, and bologna was the best out of all the terrible shit the cafeteria served.

The cafeteria was loud and crowded and full of too many bodies moving too fast all at once, and normally Travis could shove his discomfort down far enough to ignore all that, but today was especially anxiety attack inducing. Everything around him seemed like it was too much of itself. Too noisy, too busy, too fast, too cramped. Too everything. It was making Travis’ skin crawl. It was making it hard for him to sit still. His fingers twitched underneath the lunch table where he sat, alone as usual. He could feel the letter in his back pocket. He wanted to work on writing more, knew what was on it wasn’t enough, wasn’t even close to being enough, but he was petrified at the idea of someone seeing what he was writing and finding out about his… his disgusting, abnormal obsession, his _feelings_ for-

“Hey, Travis.”

Speak of the devil.

Travis had been trying to avoid Sal Fisher since the day prior. His knuckles were still sore from the blow he gave him- he could tell they were going to bruise, but he didn’t care. He deserved another bruise. He’d thought for sure that the only thing Sal would have for him when they met again would be hatred, and that was partly true. Larry Johnson was next to him, and the glare the taller boy was giving Travis was comprised of nothing short of enraged, unbridled loathing. He could tell Larry was two words away from lunging across the table and strangling him. But Sal? Sal was as stone-faced as ever. His eyes weren’t full of hatred. They were as calm as they always were, and they were gazing at Travis expectantly, waiting for him to respond to their hello.

_Say something, you fucking idiot._

Sal looking him in the eyes always made Travis panic. His mind scrambled for something normal to say, but the nausea eating away at his stomach beat him to it.

“I thought I smelled trash.” His voice came out as a sneer. “What’re you flamers up to?”

_Fucking hell. You are literal sentient garbage._

“Get bent, Travis,” Larry spat, venom in every word, but most poignant in the way he said his name. Behind his mask, Sal’s eyes flickered with an emotion Travis couldn’t identify. It made the nausea curl bitterly in his gut. He opened his mouth to give Larry a stinging retort.

“Don’t you have some sandwiches to attend to?” Sal interrupted, his voice as level as his expressionless prosthetic. Travis flushed angrily, his emotions still swirling uncomfortably under his skin, but he didn’t say the hateful words that were pounding at the inside of the skull. As they often did, Sal’s quips had successfully broken the tension in the air. Sal was normally good at defusing unwanted confrontations. Travis let the silence drag on for a few moments more before turning back to his lunch, eyes glued pointedly to the table in front of him.

“You’re lucky it’s bologna day,” he muttered.

_‘You’re lucky it’s bologna day?’ Are you fucking trying to ruin Sal’s impression of you even more? You useless motherfucker._

He kicked the voice in the back of his head in the shins and focused on the sandwich in his hands.

Larry rolled his eyes and muttered something to Sal before turning and stalking away back towards the rest of their friend group. Sal didn’t move. Neither did his cornflower blue eyes, which were still gazing evenly at Travis, as though expectant. As though he was waiting for something. The hairs on the back of Travis’ neck stood up and he glared down at his food, praying to God that Sal would take the fucking hint.

Finally, Sal let out a quiet breath- or was it a sigh?- and walked away, taking those cornflower blue eyes with him.

So why did Travis still feel as if they were looking at him?

He needed to get out of there.

The hallways were almost always empty during lunch, since most of the student body was hanging out in the cafeteria, or outside, in the parking lot. Travis listened to his sneakers squeak noisily against the tile floor and paused outside of the first bathroom he saw, listening intently to check if anyone was occupying it before ducking inside. He practically threw himself against the cool plaster of the bathroom wall and took a deep, shuddering breath of air, trying to calm his racing heartbeat. He twisted his fingers together in an attempt to make them stop shaking. The letter in his back pocket burned hot and angry against his jeans, but it burned even deeper against the skin of his hands.

Travis was good at writing, but he wasn’t good at expressing his feelings, especially not his feelings for Sal Fisher. Frustratingly, although writing out his thoughts should have made them easier to digest, it felt as though his consciousness was just as scrambled and fucked on paper as it was in his brain.

_I know we don’t really know each other and you probably hate me and definitely think I hate you-_

No. That was too obvious. Although the blue-haired boy had his fair share of schoolyard bullies and judgemental hecklers, Travis was Sal’s most… active tormentor. “Hatred” was too strong an emotion, even if it was accurate. Sal would know immediately who the note was from.

_I know we don’t really know each other and you probably have your opinions of me. I thought maybe if I told you how I feel, things could be different._

Travis didn’t think things could be different, not really, but it was a nice thought. It was the kind of thought that he wanted to grip tight in his fists and press hard against his chest, knowing shamefully that if he opened his fingers, it would fall away like sand. It was that kind of thought.

_The truth is…_

What was the truth? That every time Sal looked in his general direction, Travis’ stomach felt like it was trying to cave in on itself? That he was so angry and wrecked that he took all of his curling, writhing self hatred out on an innocent boy with a deformed face and a dead mom? That Travis had potent, seemingly ceaseless, disgustingly homoerotic feelings for said boy? Was that the truth?

Travis knew it was. But he didn’t much feel like writing that.

Instead he thought about Sal. Not the nausea he made him feel, not his own frayed subconscious desires and badly disguised self loathing- just Sal. Who he was. His cornflower blue eyes. The little clips he used to pull his bangs back, the ribbons his friends would braid into his hair. His small, soft hands with their delicately painted nails. How he never seemed phased by anything, not his classmate’s heckling, not being caught sleeping in class, not even Travis. How his eyes crinkled when he grinned. His laugh.

_The truth is, I can’t stop thinking about you. I think I might actually-_

No.

_I think I might be in-_

**No.**

Travis took a breath and tried to steady his hand before starting again.

_The truth is, I can’t stop thinking about you. I’m crazy about you. I think you’re amazing!_

Once he wrote that down, he knew it was true. He did think Sally Face was amazing. He thought Sally Face was one of the most amazing people he’d ever met. Beautiful and bright and brilliant, more brilliant than Travis could ever hope to be. The kind of sight that he could only ever hope to be enraptured with from afar. He took another breath to help himself calm down. It didn’t work.

_But I know these feelings are wrong. It’s not the way a boy should feel._

The nausea in his stomach curled tighter.

_Shame swallows me whole._

He gripped his pencil so hard his knuckles turned white.

_My father would kill me but I can’t live in his shadow forever, I just.._

I just..

He just what?

Not even Travis knew, really. He had no idea how to pick the message up from there. He’d spent the next twenty minutes writing and rewriting, scribbling out sentences faster than he could write them, growing increasingly frustrated until finally his father had yelled at him to hurry up, lest he miss the school bus. He’d nearly ripped the paper in half in his haste to stuff it down to the bottom of his backpack.

And now he was in a bathroom, rereading his letter to Sal Fisher, and hating every word of it.

Travis crumpled the paper into a ball in his hands as though that would make him feel better and chucked it towards the trash can. He didn’t look to make sure it made its target. He almost preferred that it bounced off the side and onto the dirty bathroom floor, where his shame and self-disgust could be ground into the linoleum where it belonged. He didn’t hear the letter land over the slam of the stall door. The lid of the toilet was cold against his thighs, but he welcomed the sensation- it offset the heat that had seemed to spread over his chest, choking his lungs, stinging his eyes, burning the inside of his ribs like candles lit in his stomach. Travis wrapped his arms around his middle and squeezed as tight as he could. He could tell he was on the verge of sobs, and for once, he wanted to let himself cry. He didn’t care if it was girly, or weak, or cowardly. He didn’t care if his breathing, wet and ragged in the stillness of the bathroom, was bordering on hyperventilation. He wanted to let himself hyperventilate. At least then he’d be feeling an emotion he understood.

The door to the bathroom swung open and Travis slammed a hand over his mouth in a desperate attempt to quiet himself. The sound of the newcomer’s sneakers padding against the tile floor sounded louder and harsher than it should’ve, and Travis squeezed his eyes shut as if closing them would melt the world around him away. He breathed in, slowly, as to not alert the stranger of his presence, but his wrecked vocal chords gave him away through a barely-stifled choke. The footsteps on the tile stopped, as though in surprise, pausing for a long moment before stepping two feet forward, towards Travis’ hiding place. Travis gripped himself tighter, willing his body into silence.

Maybe they didn’t hear him. Maybe they didn’t hear him. Maybe they didn’t hear him. Maybe-

“Anyone in there?”

**Fuck _._ **

The voice was muffled, but clearly stationed right outside the stall Travis was currently hiding in. Forgetting himself for a second, he cursed God for letting him blow his cover. He wanted nothing more than for whoever was on the other side of the door to go fuck themselves and leave him to his wallowing, and decided to let them know that.

“No duh, fuckwad. Buzz off!” His words were harsh but his tone gave him away. He didn't sound angry, he sounded… exhausted.

“Travis?”

No.

No. Shit. Fuck. Not him. Not him.

“Were you just… crying a second ago?”

That fucking concern. Usually hearing Sal Fisher’s voice go soft with worry would make Travis’ insides melt a little bit, but right then it just made him feel like vomiting again.

“Sally Face? I- no!” Travis’ surprise was evident in his voice, but he quickly covered it up with venom. “Can’t a guy get some privacy?!”

Silence. Travis bit his tongue, willing, praying that Sal would realize he didn’t want him here and leave him alone, leave him alone with his disgusting emotions and nauseating self hatred, leave him alone to rot with his shame. After what he did to him, it’s what he deserved.

“...... why do you hate me so much?”

Travis hadn’t expected that. His mind scrambled for an answer. For a second, he had no idea how to reply. The truth was too complicated, too incriminating. He barely understood it himself, he couldn’t possibly explain it to Sal Fisher, of all people. He sat there floundering for a moment before his brain finally caught up and from the depths of his subconscious came the first words his mouth managed to form.

“Because you and your dumb friends are a bunch of homos! It’s sick! It’s not right!” The more Travis spoke, the more his words were directed at himself, not Sal. He didn’t stop himself from saying what the nausea in his stomach urged him to. “God will never love you! Why should I?!”

Silence again. Travis dug his nails into his palm hard enough to leave marks. Take the hint, Sally Face. For the love of God, please, just take the hint.

But Sally had never been good at that.

“You know we aren’t all actually gay, right?”

Travis didn’t know that. Or maybe he did, and he didn’t want to admit it. Maybe assuming all of them were homos was just another backwards way of justifying his terrible actions. Or maybe it was just wish-fulfillment.

….. wait, wish-fulfillment? Wish-fulfillment for fucking _what_ , exactly? Travis shook his head in an attempt to clear it. He didn’t want to think about it too hard, even though he suspected he already knew the answer to that.

“I mean, besides Todd. Todd is super gay.” Sally added it almost as an afterthought, the influx of his voice losing some of its seriousness before he continued. “But that's a part of who he is and I think it's wonderful. He's one of the kindest people I know! How could anyone hate Todd?"

 _I hate Todd,_ Travis thought bitterly, though the words had no real weight to them. He was running out of hurtful things to shoot back at Sal. None of his previous retorts seemed to be working. Sal didn’t sound angry- while Travis was teetering on yelling with every word, Sal’s voice was as even as ever. He’d never understand how Sal was always so fucking calm. It made his skin prickle. He settled on replying with an exasperated-sounding “Ugh!” and hoped it would be enough to shut Sal up for once. Underneath the stall door, the blue-haired boy shifted his weight from one scuffed high top to the other.

“Is your father pushing these beliefs onto you?”

That caught Travis off-guard. Only for a second, though, before defensiveness rushed up from somewhere deep within him.

“Just because my dad is a preacher doesn’t mean he owns me! I’m my own person!”

The moment the words left his mouth, he knew they were a lie, and he knew that Sal could tell they were, too. He braced himself for the angry response that was sure to come.

“Yeah, but….” Sal’s tone dipped down, softly, genuinely. The feeling in his voice took Travis’ breath away. “Well, you just seem so unhappy, man.”

Travis would never know how Sal was so intuitive. He tried to hate it, but he just.. couldn’t. He found that there were a lot of things he just couldn’t hate about Sal.

“Are you sure your dad isn’t putting too much pressure on you? I bet it’s tough, being the son of such an intense man.”

The bruise around Travis’ right eye throbbed. “You have…” He swallowed thickly, shakily. Why was he saying this? He was giving too much away. He needed to stop talking. The words seem to spill over his lips on their own. “You have no idea what it’s like.”

“I’m sorry, man.”

This time, Sal’s genuinity made a wave of anger rush up Travis’ throat. He swallowed again, hard, in order to speak roughly around it. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Sally Face.” His tone was bitter. “I don’t need your pity.”

“We don’t have to be enemies. You know that, right?”

What?

“I think, under all that anger, there’s a good dude who’s afraid to be himself.”

Travis had to have been dreaming.

“If you ever need someone to talk to, or if you need to get away from your dad for a while.. You can hang out with me.”

The gentleness in Sally’s voice made him want to cry. Travis gripped the edge of the toilet seat so hard his knuckles turned white and tried to ignore his quickening pulse. “Why-” he choked on the word. Took a breath, waited a beat, then tried again. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“I don’t think you’re a bad person, Travis,” said Sal Fisher.

As if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Travis cried for real, then. The tears were warm and salty on his lips. He stared at those scuffed high-tops underneath the stall door, as though they would vanish if he blinked at the wrong moment, as though everything would vanish if he blinked. Something was swirling, tight and warm, inside his chest, and in that moment, all he really wanted to do was tell Sal the truth.

“You know, I don’t… I don’t really hate you. O-Or your friends.” He added that last part a little too quickly. Outside the stall, Sal let out a quiet, breathy laugh that made something in Travis’ stomach squirm.

“I didn’t really think so,” he said. There was a smile in his voice and Travis flushed at the sound, warmth blossoming from underneath his ribs and going up, up, past his chest, following the blush that had started creeping up his neck. His lips were dry despite the tears that had run over them, and he licked them nervously.

_What are you gonna say to that, Trav? “Sorry I was so horrible to you, it’s just that you make me have all these disgusting gay feelings and I didn’t know how to deal with them so instead I just fucking punched you in the nose”?_

Travis took a breath. He might as well start by apologising. At this point, it was the least he could do. Maybe it was selfish, but even if Sal didn’t accept it, he wanted to say it anyway.

“W-Well…” _Spit it out. Spit it out, you absolute fucking mess of a person._ “I’m sorry I’ve been such an asshole. You…. You didn’t deserve that.”

He hated how weak his voice was, how small he felt. But at least he said it. Now, even if Sal rejected him flat-out, turned on his heel and stormed out of the bathroom never to interact with him again, at least he said it.

But of course, Sal didn’t do that. Instead, he pressed one delicate hand against the stall door and said, kindly and graciously, “That means a lot to me. It really does. Thank you. And what I said, about being here for you in you ever decide you want a friend…” Travis imagined that if they were having this conversation face to face, Sal would be looking him dead in the eyes. “I meant that.”

The thing in Travis’ stomach squirmed again, tighter this time, dipping uncomfortably low. “Don’t push your luck, Sally Face!” he said forcefully, in an attempt to shove the feeling away. Suddenly he remembered the other paper in his pocket- the one he’d picked up off of Sal’s desk that morning. He didn’t think about what he was doing at the time. Secretly he was scared that it was some sort of hate letter, and wanted to dispose of it himself, not that he’d ever admit that. “Oh, here- I was gonna flush this down the toilet, but I guess you can have it. I found it on your desk.”

 _Don’t ask why I have it,_ he thought desperately. _Please, fuck, don’t ask why I have it._

Sal didn’t ask why he had it. He just reached underneath the door and took the envelope from Travis’ slightly shaking hand, his small, slender fingers coming dangerously close to Travis’ own. He muttered something softly to himself, presumably saying what was on the envelope underneath his breath. After the shorter boy straightened up, Travis retracted his arm and wrapped it back around his midsection.

“O-Okay, now scram so I can have my alone time,” he muttered gruffly, ignoring his stuttering heartbeat. “And, uh..” Sal’s sneakers turned away from the stall, beginning to walk back towards the bathroom door, and Travis felt a jolt of panic, tripping over his next words. “Don’t tell anyone about this or you’re dead!”

The sneakers paused. Travis resisted the urge to slam his head into the wall. They had just had that entire gag worthy heart-to-heart and he said fucking that? After he’d practically killed himself trying to apologize? God dammit. He scrambled to backtrack, his voice faltering in embarrassment. “Er.. I mean, just…. Don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”

A pause, and then,

“I won’t. I promise.”

Travis could hear Sal’s smile in his voice again. He listened to the blue-haired boy’s footsteps gently pad away, hearing the creak of the bathroom door as it opened and then a soft slam as it closed, then let out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. Almost cautiously, he lowered his feet back down to the tile floor, focusing on inhaling air through his nose and then letting it slowly. His hands were still shaking. Deep in his gut, that something was still swirling incessantly, tight and warm and... Expanding. As though it was growing from an unknown source inside his chest. Travis closed his eyes and thought about Sal Fisher’s laugh.

He knew he had a lot more to think about, but right then, all he wanted to do was think about Sal Fisher’s laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for a while i figured this would only be a one shot but HO BOY was i wrong


	3. the next logical step

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Travis doesn’t talk to Sal Fisher again, until he finally does, and it goes a thousand times better than he expected it to.

The next logical step was, of course, to ask Sal Fisher to hang out. It was unfortunate for everyone that it took Travis almost three months to do it.

At first it was just because he was still reeling with embarrassment from Sally walking in on his little bathroom breakdown. For almost two weeks straight he could barely look in the shorter boy’s direction without practically having an aneurysm, much less work up the courage to seek him out alone- and it did have to alone. _Sal_ might have miraculously found Travis redeemable, but he knew for a fact that the blue-haired boy's friends had not. Ashley Campbell and Larry Johnson both shot him looks of pure hatred on the regular, and after he’d spent years verbally abusing Todd and that fat kid Chug, he didn’t think he could rely on either of them to be open-minded about his newfound, tentative friendship (if he could even call it that) with Sally. Chug’s goth girlfriend Maple was the only one Travis didn’t have a direct negative history with, but she was… unnervingly quiet. It creeped him out. Approaching Sal alone was the only viable option.

But then again, Sal made him more nervous than all five of his weird ass friends combined.

So Travis waited.

He wrote another letter to Sal, though not to actually send to him- merely as a way to try and work through his emotions some more (it was more or less successful). This one was longer and more embarrassing. At some points in the letter, what he was writing wasn’t even grammatically correct, because his thoughts seemed to tumble over each other in their race to get onto the paper, vowels tripping over consonants and dodging to avoid stray capitalization in a stream of flustered, nervous consciousness. After about two hours of failing to write, everything he was trying to articulate ended up as just.. words, and none of them really made any sense. Travis flushed the letter down the toilet.

He visited his counselor for the first time since he’d started high school. The counselor was an older man with faded brown skin that wrinkled at the corners of his smile and a thick New York accent that made it a little hard to completely take him seriously, though his good intentions always showed in his eyes. Travis didn’t really like him, which wasn’t saying much considering he didn’t like most people, but he also didn’t really hate him, which was actually saying quite a bit much. They had a slightly awkward conversation about mental health and positive self talk where the counselor did most of the talking and Travis mostly nodded, but he felt strangely lighter after he left the office. He hadn’t spoken to anyone about his feelings so thoroughly in a really long time. It was.. Different. Good different.

He stared at the back of Sal Fisher’s head a lot. In the hallways, in the cafeteria. Not in Algebra, unfortunately, as he actually sat it front of Sal in that class. Every so often he felt as if the blue-haired boy was looking at _him_ , and it made his entire body feel like it was buzzing. But mainly Travis stared at the back of Sal’s head. Did he feel like a creep? Absolutely.

But then Sal Fisher wore his hair in a bun for the first time that semester, and Travis decided he might be okay with that.

Now that he’d realized his feelings towards the smaller boy were decidedly not hatred, Travis began to notice just how much he noticed Sally Face. It was as if he changed the very air of any room he entered in a way that only Travis’ skin was affected by. Every head of blue hair that flashed in the corner of Travis’ vision sent his heartbeat careening into overdrive, a feeling exploding in his chest that bordered on panic, but was mixed with a squirmy, mushy sort of warmth that Travis began to decide he really, really disliked. It was the sort of warmth that made his leg bounce nervously whenever he saw Sal sitting with his friends during lunch, or whenever Sal just happened to sit slightly closer than usual to him on the bus, or whenever he wore something particularly noticeable to school. Like today. Today Sally Face was wearing a blue pleated skirt over a grey collared top, and something about the way the skirt fell around his mid-thighs made the pit of Travis’ stomach flip over on itself. He wanted to scrub the feeling away from his insides.

Today was also Bologna Day, but Travis wasn’t very hungry. He’d gotten his most recent Algebra test back and the gratingly low score hit him so hard he half-expected a second black eye to form. That didn’t happen, but he did lose his appetite, and so elected to spend his lunch period pitifully picking at his sandwich instead of consuming it. He’d attempted to force himself to eat but had quickly lost his motivation. The bologna wasn’t as good, anyway- ever since Mrs. Packerton passed away three months back, it had lost the flavor that Travis enjoyed so much. It was almost as though that old croon was the one behind the meat’s delectability. He wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, though. So he ate it. Even though it tasted like shit now.

“Hey, Travis.”

Travis’ hand spasmed at the sound of _that voice_ saying his name, the plastic fork he held in it scraping noisily against his tray on its way to poke at some peas. The back of his neck prickled with warmth as he met Sally Face’s eyes. The shorter boy was holding a lunch tray of his own, presumably in the middle of walking to join his friends at their normal table, and currently waiting for Travis to _stop being such a flamer and actually fucking reply to him, you moron._

He still needed to work on the whole “positive self-talk” thing.

“Uh, hey.”

His mouth felt like he was chewing something even though he wasn’t, and Travis swallowed to get rid of the sensation. Sal’s eyes scrunched up in the way that they always did when he smiled before they dropped down to the contents of Travis’ lunch and momentarily lost their friendly gleam.

“... Bologna, huh?”

“Yeah. What about it, Sally Face?” Travis’ instincts were to leap to his own defense ( _what are you defending? Your choice of lunch meat? Jesus Christ, Phelps, you’re such a fucking spaz_ ) so the words came out sharper than likely necessary. He bit his tongue to keep any unwanted expletives from escaping over his lips. Sal paused as though pondering something, then shrugged nonchalantly.

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. Enjoy your lunch, dude.”

“You too” was Travis’ mumbled response. Sal gave him one last unseen smile before he turned and continued the last few meters to his regular lunch table.

Awkward.

That seemed to be the main mark of their conversations recently. Awkward hellos and Travis mumbling to avoid speaking directly to Sal’s annoyingly stagnant porcelain face. Travis wasn’t naive, though, and he certainly wasn’t ungrateful. He knew that these split second interactions, however stiff and uncomfortable, were leaps and bounds more than he ever expected to receive from Sal, and infinitely more than he deserved. So he would take what he could get.

But that wasn’t really the problem. Travis was good at taking what he could get. The real issue was, what he got- the stolen looks and nervous glances and awkward hellos- none of it was enough. He couldn’t deny the truth, even if he hated himself for it. He wanted more than this.

So Travis decided he had to talk to Sally Face again.

The only thing to do was actually fucking do it.

He figured he’d do it after school on a Thursday. Sal stayed after for guitar club on Thursdays, so Travis wouldn’t have to worry about making him miss the bus, and his father was working late- something about a monthly church staff meeting- so if he was lucky, Travis could make it home before him and avoid both another lecture and the question of why he didn’t take the bus. And Travis would rather eat his own shit than explain _that_ to his dad.

The next few days before _the day_ seemed to both drag by at a crawl and fly by in a flash. The more Travis thought about what he was planning to do, the more he started to feel like he really didn’t want to do it. By Wednesday evening, the nerves that had started off as small and manageable were beginning to make him feel nauseous, as if the butterflies in his stomach had morphed into snakes, writhing around and getting entangled in his intestines. He decided to just not think about it, but that didn’t work, because frankly he couldn’t _stop_ thinking about it. The voice in the back of his mind wouldn’t shut up about it, either.

_You’re gonna fuck this up so bad. It’s going to be a disaster and you’re going to fuck up the one chance you have to get closer to Sally Face. You’re going to fuck this up and he’s going to hate you again._

_You can barely have a thirty second conversation with him without sounding like an absolute asshole, and even then he probably only talks to you out of pity because you made such a fool of yourself in the bathroom. Whatever you think this is, that’s not it. He just feels bad for you, Travis. You don’t need his fucking sympathy._

_What are you thinking? You fucking moron. You’re not his friend. You made his life miserable. Why would he ever want to see your ugly face again?_

_Haven’t you seen the way he looks at that Ashley chick? He’s probably not even….. It’s not like you have a chance. You’re only kidding yourself._

_You’re on such thin fucking ice right now, Phelps. What are you even gonna say to him?_

It wasn’t until after the very end of seventh period that Thursday, after the majority of the student body had flooded out the school doors to their mode of transport home and after Travis had seemingly sleepwalked halfway across the building in order to stand eight feet away from Sal Fisher’s locker, unseen for now but not for very much longer considering the blue-haired boy himself was in the middle of rifling through said locker and very close to finding whatever sheet of music he was currently searching for, did Travis realize he had no fucking idea. He had no plan, no clue of what he should lead with, how he should approach this. Nothing.

Oh, God.

He had to do it. He was here already, wasn’t he? He was standing a mere few feet away from Sal “Sally Face” Fisher and all he had to do was open his mouth and say a handful of words, or maybe a couple words, or even just one word. Saying one word shouldn’t be hard. It was only one word. Travis tried to convince himself this, but his anxiety was quickly persuading him otherwise, and he could feel the panic start to rise up- as easy and fluid and instinctual as breathing- in his chest. He wanted to leave. He needed to leave. He started to leave.

And then Sal turned around.

“Travis?”

Fuck.

“... H-Hey, Sally Face.”

Sal shut his locker with the hand that wasn’t holding the aforementioned music sheet before turning around fully and reaching down to grab his guitar case, standing it up next to him and then leaning against it, resting the crook of his arm against the smooth black plastic. His hair was tied up in his usual twin pigtails. He looked like he was due for a haircut- his bangs were growing out. They lay messily across his forehead, slightly wavy blue strands framing his face and contrasting starkly with the white of his prosthetic. The oversized Sanity’s Fall t-shirt he wore was tied up in a knot around his midsection. Bronze rings, chipped black nail polish, and smudges of red Sharpie decorated his fingers, and from his ears dangled dark blue plastic earrings in the shape of cartoon ghosts with wide white eyes and gaping mouths. His clothes echoed “punk reject”, while his hair echoed “elementary school girl”. Travis bitterly noted that Sal somehow pulled off both looks very well.

“Travis.”

Travis blinked, flushing. Shit. Had Sal said something? The blue-haired boy was looking at him curiously, expectantly, as though he’d asked a question and was awaiting an answer. “Uh- fuck, sorry. What’d you say?”

_Wow, nice job, wise ass. Not even a minute in and you already got so distracted ogling him that you missed an entire sentence being said. Stellar fucking performance. This is going so well._

“I asked if you needed something.” Sal didn’t sound impatient, and he hadn’t moved from his relaxed position leaning up against his guitar. His gaze was gentle and calm and maintaining unnervingly even eye contact with Travis. The kind of eye contact that made the panic in his chest only worsen.

“I-I, uh-” Travis’ fingers twitched behind his back. “I was- um-”

_Quick, come up with something real fucking witty to say so that he doesn’t think you’re even more of an absolute moron._

“You’re good at, uh, algebra, right?”

_…………… you fucking dumbass._

“You- uh, it’s just that..” Travis stumbled over himself in an attempt to elaborate, stringing frantic sentences together from the first words to appear in his head. “You always get high marks, and you always finish tests early and shit, so I’m just, you- y’know, I’m assuming that you’re doing... pretty good? In that class?”

Sal shrugged with his left arm, waving the music sheet in the air slightly as he did. “Yeah, I mean, I guess I’m doing pretty good. I’m no math whiz or anything but I’m okay.” He cocked his head to the side in a way that made Travis swallow nervously. “Why?”

Travis didn’t know why. He hadn’t really thought he’d get this far.

_Say something._

“Uh- cause, um-”

_Say something. Fucking say something, Phelps._

“I was just- I was wondering if, uh-”

_Oh my fucking God, just, say something, anything, literally anything just- fucking hell! Say something, you absolutely hopeless piece of human shi-_

“I was wondering if maybe you could tutor me?”

….. Oh, God almighty.

_You colossal fucking idiot._

Shit. Shit shit shit shit **shit**.

_Look what you’ve done. Look at what you’ve fucking done, Travis._

He was going to say no.

_Of course he’s going to say no. Why the fuck would he not say-_

“Sure.”

Travis did the mental equivalent of a double-take. He couldn’t have heard that right. “What?”

“Sure, dude.” Sal blinked at him, his cornflower blue eyes giving away nothing but friendliness and an even temper. “When are you free?”

“When am I- uh, I guess, um- I guess Tuesday? I’m usually free on- I’m usually free then, I guess.” Travis felt like he was twitching. Behind his back, he picked at the skin of his fingers with shaking hands.

Sal thought for a second, then nodded, his pigtails bouncing adorably as he did. “Yeah, Tuesday should be good. Do you want to just use the library, or would you want to come over to my place?”

The idea of being alone in Sal Fisher’s apartment with Sal Fisher himself made Travis feel like the bottom of his gut was leaping up into his throat. He shook his head a little too quickly.

“No- no, uh, the library’s fine. That’s fine. Um. So. Tuesday, then?”

Sal nodded again. Sal’s pigtails bounced again. Travis’ intestines got tangled in his vocal chords again.

“Tuesday it is.”

There was something in the silence that followed that made the tips of Travis’ ears go warm. Or maybe it was the way Sal kept steady, gut-swirling eye contact with him. Though his gaze wasn’t intense, it still made Travis look away.

The conversation was less than five minutes long. It wasn’t until Sal waved goodbye and Travis mentally pummeled himself for thinking that Sal waving goodbye was almost a vomit-inducing level of cute and those two bouncing, bobbing blue pigtails vanished down the hall towards their guitar club meeting and Travis stopped outside of the high school’s front double doors in order to check his phone did he realize that not even half an hour had passed. Travis’ fingers were still twitching, his intestines were still lodged in his throat, he still felt Sal’s eyes like a warm weight in the back of his mind, and not even half an hour had passed. It felt like Travis had just breached the surface of the ocean after being trapped under the waves for millennia. His muscles ached with nonexistent strain and his throat burned, as though he’d been choking on invisible saltwater, and through all of these sensations, the voice in the back of his mind stayed quiet. For once, it seemed to have nothing to say.

Travis picked at the skin of his fingers again.

_Tuesday._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after a million years, finally a new chapter!! this took me way too freaking long and it's kind of bad but i hope you guys like it anyway :)!!


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